


#valeofarrynbackpackershostel

by everyl1ttleth1ng



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Backpacker Hostel AU, F/M, Fluff, Had to add that tag coz I realised it was getting way more angsty than fluffy!, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-05-28 06:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19388296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyl1ttleth1ng/pseuds/everyl1ttleth1ng
Summary: Davos and Marya Seaworth own the Backpackers’ Hostel in the Vale of Arryn, the much sought-after and highly grammable destination of wealthy adventure tourists. Years ago they had on staff the two best employees the hostel had ever seen - twenty-three year old Gendry Waters and young Arya Stark, on her gap year just after leaving school. It had always seemed to Marya and Davos that something was blooming between the two youngsters and they’d chuckled to themselves as Gendry and Arya poured over maps and dreamed of the travels the two of them planned to take together after Arya’s gap year was over. But when the annual music festival rolled into town and Gendry caught the eye of one of the headline acts, he followed the Red Woman to Kings Landing leaving young Arya heartbroken.Five years later an older, more world-weary Arya returns to the Vale and the job she had once loved so much.Davos is delighted until the day he finds her facing off in the lobby with his other golden boy returned - Gendry Waters.





	1. Chapter 1

Davos whistled to himself as he sauntered down the stairs. Running a Backpackers’ Hostel in the mountainous Vale of Arryn was not for the faint-hearted but he had survived the local music festival for another year with only one overflowing bathful of beer and minimal late-night revelling-fuelled destruction. On top of that, it had all looked awesome on Instagram.

He attributed his unusual success to the recent return of Arya Stark. She certainly didn’t look like a head-kicker with her tiny stature, but that was all part of her charm, especially now that she’d returned from her own travels, a woman grown. 

He realised how much she’d been only a slip of a kid on her last stint on his staff, especially now that he saw the way she strode around the hostel with her easy adult confidence, her cool gaze and slow, sardonic observations keeping all the residents in check. 

He was pleased to see that despite the hard things she’d had to endure, she hadn’t lost that ability they’d all loved in her years ago - that knack she had of befriending anyone and everyone. She kept those backpackers in line without so much as breaking a sweat, but they loved her even as she jollied them into doing the right thing such that she never had to pay for any of her own drinks down at the pub and she was kept in a steady supply of touristy souvenir trinkets as gifts. Her bushwalks, rock-climbing expeditions, canyoning groups, abseiling sessions and caving trips were always over-subscribed to the point that he wondered why he even bothered hiring the rest of his staff. He supposed someone needed to clean the rooms and answer the phones. He wished he could provide her a more able assistant though.

Davos reached the point of the staircase where his view opened up to the lobby of the hostel below and his jaunty whistle died on his lips. He melted back into the shadows to observe the tense interaction unfolding on the ground floor.

Arya stood in the center of the lobby staring at the hulking form in the doorway, another of Davos’ long-lost employees perhaps, he hoped, seeking to return to the fold.

Gendry Waters watched Arya warily, lowering his bags slowly to the floor without taking his eyes off her.

“Davos about?” he asked casually.

“Hello to you too,” she replied.

Gendry let out a long breath. “Hey Arya. How’re things?”

She shrugged. “Fine.”

“It’s nice to see you,” Gendry admitted, his voice softening. “You look good.”

“Last I saw you, that Red Woman had one hand in your back pocket and the other inside your shirt.”

He hung his head. “Not my finest set of decisions, I’ll grant you that.”

“No?” she asked archly. “You seemed pretty happy about it at the time.”

“Look, Arya,” said Gendry. “You know I left you message after message trying to apologise. You never took my calls.”

“All water under the bridge now,” she said airily. “You had your adventures, I had mine.”

“And now life brings us both back here again.”

Davos saw the tell-tale clench of Arya’s fists by her side and decided there was no more time for lurking behind the scenes.

“Is that my lad Gendry I hear?” he boomed from the upper floor, being certain to loudly break into whatever tension seethed below.

A grin broke out across Gendry’s face as he looked up. “Davos!” he called. “Gods, I’ve missed you.” 

Davos jogged down the staircase and embraced him warmly. “Another of my prodigals, returned!” he cried. “What with you back, and Arya here, I’m returned to my glory days all of a sudden!”

Gendry looked back at his once and future boss, his eyes darting uncomfortably between him and Arya. “You could use another pair of hands, then?”

“Of course!” Davos enthused. “Always! Especially when they’re yours.”

The big man ran a hand through his scruffy black hair. “That ok with you, Arya?” he asked tentatively.

She looked at him as if he’d grown another head. “What difference could it possibly make to me?”

Gendry smiled weakly. “Great. Consider me back then.”

Davos chuckled and embraced him again. Marya had loved observing the first instalment of their ultimately unfruitful love story. She’d be thrilled when he told her that their favourite live-action soap opera had reinstated itself that morning in their lobby.

The older man cast his eye over Arya’s feigned indifference and Gendry’s repentant melancholy. He just knew that this next episode would be a firecracker.

“Can I put you in the apartment next door to Arya again?” Davos asked, letting himself watch her wide-eyed reaction more than his. 

Gendry gulped. “Just like old times.”

“It just means sharing the balcony with her and that wolf of hers.”

“Wolf?” he asked nervously. “That’s new.”

Arya’s smile was as predatory as her sweet tone was false. “Oh! My puppy, Nymeria. You’ll adore her.”

Davos chuckled to himself as he picked up one of Gendry’s bags and shouldered it. “Come on, son. Let’s get you settled back in.”


	2. Chapter 2

Sitting in his lounge room watching Nymeria pace back and forth on the other side of the sliding glass door to the balcony felt to Gendry a lot like the few collective times he’d had the opportunity to watch tigers at the zoo. 

While Arya had taken her dog for a walk earlier in the day, he’d taken advantage of the opportunity and had blithely stepped out onto the balcony to hang out his washing. He now knew that the feat of fetching it back in again would come with considerable risk to his life.

As if reading his thoughts, Nymeria sniffed at his row of clean boxer shorts dangling from the clothes horse. He could hear the low growl in the back of her throat as she resumed her pacing.

Maybe coming back to the Vale was a mistake. 

He decided to leave his dry washing where it was and go in search of Davos.

Gendry found his boss pinning up notices of what was on in the hostel and around the Vale for the week ahead. At the sight of him, Davos dropped his sheath of brightly coloured photocopies and embraced him again. 

“I won’t have to hug you every time I see you, but, gods, it’s good to have you back again, lad,” the older man said through a mouthful of thumbtacks.

Gendry grinned. He didn’t think there was anyone else in the world whose welcome was as certain as Davos’.

“That was quite the reunion earlier,” his boss said. “Did I make a mistake putting you two back next door to one another?”

He sighed. “I don’t know, Davos.”

“You knew she was here.” It was a statement rather than a question.

“I kept an eye on Instagram. That’s why I came back. But she didn’t exactly look happy to see me, did she?”

Davos shrugged. “She wasn’t indifferent. You stirred something there, that’s for sure.”

Gendry took up a pile of papers and a handful of thumbtacks to help. “What if I stirred up a hornet’s nest?”

Davos turned to look him in the eye. “Would it be anything less than you deserve?”

He’d been an idiot, a total and utter idiot. 

When Gendry had first got his job with Davos, Arya’s open-hearted trust and wide-eyed love for the world and everyone in it had absolutely melted his heart. She was from a wealthy family up north, she’d been thoroughly well-loved all her life and she’d come to work at a backpackers far from home because her fancy private school education had given her every opportunity to gain an array of impressive outdoor skills but allowed for absolutely no expectation that she’d ever be able to put them to good use. At the encouragement of one of her older brothers who’d travelled and climbed extensively in the Vale, she’d taken what was meant to be a gap year after school working in the Seaworth’s hostel. 

Gendry had arrived to take up his position the week after her.

She and Gendry had tumbled into an immediate intensity of friendship and she had quickly become for him the closest thing to family he’d known since the death of his mum. They’d made plans for what they’d do when her gap year was up and they’d spent night after night in her flat or in the staff lounge poring over maps and dreaming of the adventures that they planned to take together. 

But when the annual music festival rolled into town towards the end of that summer, Gendry had caught the eye of Melisandre R’hllor, the exotic, beautiful and seductive lead singer of The Red Woman and he’d found her intoxicating and impossible to resist. 

She’d spotted him in the crowd, dancing next to Arya, and called him up on stage. Though he’d only moments before mustered up the courage to take hold of it, he’d dropped Arya’s hand in a second and gone to her, not thinking to care that he left his best friend alone in a sea of strangers. Melisandre had sung The Red Woman’s biggest hit song while draped all over him and, as the final refrain died out, she’d kissed him as if she were inhaling him, to a roar of raucous whoops and cheers. He had only a second in his right mind, blinking out at the crowd, suddenly concerned about what Arya might think, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. All rational thought dissolved once more when Melisandre’s hands slipped under his t-shirt and yanked it over his head. He stood in front of that crowd, his body on display, being fondled and toyed with for the gratification of the audience but he was totally blind. To him it was as if Melisandre, an adult woman of genuine consequence, had seen in him something worthwhile, something she wanted, something legitimate. And he couldn’t in good faith deny that a big portion of the decision to take up her breathy invitation backstage after the show had been made in the depths of his throbbing nether regions.

She had only wanted him until they reached the next stop on her tour. Then she dropped him for the next guy - the founder of some tech start-up who could afford to buy her diamonds - and left him all alone in her intimidatingly flashy hotel room. 

He was stranded in King’s Landing, a seemingly impossible distance from the Vale and from Davos and from Arya.

_ Arya. _

He’d called Davos first to apologise and to see if he could get a sense of the damage he’d done.

His heart had broken at his own callous stupidity when he heard that she’d cried for that whole first day.

Every other call he had made that fortnight had been fielded by Arya’s voice mail. He never got any sense that she might have listened to a single one of his rambling messages.

Eventually he had called Davos again and asked him to pack up his flat and forward on his belongings. 

Davos had said it was probably for the best.

Gendry had found a job in a local mechanic, gotten on fine with his employer, but never stopped thinking of Davos and the Vale and especially of Arya.

After she’d blocked him from her account, he’d checked the hostel Instagram every day, just to try and get a glimpse of her.

He’d seen the photos of her farewell when she’d left to start off on the trip that he was meant to be taking with her.

After that he checked in once every month or two to make sure Davos was doing ok.

When the day came that he saw Davos’ post announcing that Arya Stark was returning to the hostel, he’d handed in his notice at the mechanics.

He realised he could have been accused of dawdling on his way back but he wasn’t sure how he would be received. 

At least now he knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who expressed enthusiasm for this! I hope you'll enjoy what's to come!


	3. Chapter 3

Now, three months after he’d left King’s Landing, Gendry glanced at his boss, slightly more grey and grizzled but otherwise as fit and healthy as he was five years previously. 

“I’m sorry, Davos,” he said quietly. “I walked out on you back then too.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, “But it’s pretty easy for me to forgive you. I wasn’t the one who was in love with you.”

“You don’t know that she was in love with me,” Gendry insisted.

“Don’t I?” The older man gathered up his armful of coloured papers and his box of pins and moved across the lobby to the next notice board. “Anyway, a lot of things have happened since then. Brace yourself. I don’t see her melting into your arms any time soon.”

Gendry leaned away from the noticeboard, looking through the open double doors to where Arya had taken command of the climbing wall in the rec room, a bunch of burly backpackers nodding appreciatively as she explained her technique from far above them.

He loved her new pink hair and her slender, lightly-muscled form and he could see from the nudges and glances being exchanged by some of the blokes beneath her that he was not the only one liking what he saw.

His jaw tightened and he had to work hard to suppress the rush of possessive anger he felt towards the men ogling her from the ground.

“Has she been seeing anyone?” he asked quietly, looking back to Davos.

It was clear his boss hadn’t missed a single thing that had flashed across Gendry’s face during their entire exchange.

“You think I’m on your side, don’t you, lad?” Davos asked. He clapped him firmly on the shoulder. “Gendry, I love you like a son, you know that. But I am not - and I can’t stress this enough - I am  _ not  _ on your side in this mess that you’ve got yourself into. So don’t think I’m going to be giving anything away about Arya. If you’re going to be winning her back, emphasis on the  _ if _ , you’re going to have to win her back all on your own.”

Gendry nodded. “Noted.” He supposed he’d have to keep his confidences.

“That hasn’t stopped me from pairing you up with her for all of her adventure tours. Arya’s been whinging ever since she arrived about how useless all her assistants have been. She might not like you but at least she knows you can help her keep the punters alive.”

Gendry grinned. When he’d thought about it on his many lonely nights in King’s Landing, he’d suspected he’d probably first fallen in love with her at the bottom of a cave. 

“Say no more, Davos. I’m looking forward to getting back into it.”

It was quickly apparent that Arya’s rage was almost as live five years later as it had been at the beginning. She barked her orders at him and he dutifully obeyed, Davos’ words about what he might deserve still ringing in his ears. He supposed he was just going to have to prove to her that he really was here for her this time and no other woman, no matter how seductive, was going to be waylaying him from his intention.

Backpackers were a unique breed. Usually monied and educated, they cast away their homes and families for the sake of adventure, many of them similarly seeking to throw off the stuffy morality and weighty expectations with which they’d been shackled in their formative years and “find themselves”. There was never a more potent recipe for unbridled hedonism. When the crop of other travellers in the hostel held no appeal, or sometimes before the crop of other travellers had even been fully investigated, inevitably the hostel staff would become a point of keen interest. As the fun-loving tour guides who led them safely through various feats of danger and bravery, Arya and Gendry found themselves regularly propositioned by guests. 

Gendry forced himself to smile sympathetically as Arya ducked away from dodgy lines and flirtatious transgressions of her personal space. He wasn’t sure the offer of any more concrete protection would be welcome, at least not from him. But when he was the recipient of the cheesy lines or the physical contact, Arya’s eyes on him were hard. He had broken her trust and maybe her heart and none of that looked like it would ever change.

One morning Gendry found himself alone with her in the staff lounge. She’d only let it happen because she was so engrossed in reading something on her phone that she’d forgotten to vigilantly ensure she was out of there before the second-to-last other person looked like they were so much as getting out of their seat.

He boldly pulled out a chair to take the seat beside her.

“I’d love to hear about your trip sometime,” he said.

Arya’s eyes darted up from her phone to take him in and then glanced around the room in a panic, seeing no one else present.

“You didn’t see my photos?” she sighed, resignedly settling back into her seat.

“You blocked me,” he said simply.

Arya nodded. “Ah, yeah. As I recall I got a bit sick of the sight of the Red Woman’s cleavage.”

Gendry sighed. “Will you ever forgive me for that?”

“For the cleavage shots?” she asked lightly. “Well, I found a quick solution to that, didn’t I?”

“Arya,” Gendry said earnestly. “You know what I mean.”

She took up her coffee, chugged whatever remained and slammed the empty mug down on the table. “Would you look at the time,” she said. “We have a cave to explore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks lovely people dropping in reviews! I love how committed you are to seeing Gendry suffer!


	4. Chapter 4

There was a punching bag in the hostel basement. While Davos had led Gendry back to his old apartment that first day he’d returned, Arya had nearly beaten the stuffing out of it.

Mordane’s Ladies’ College was one of those all-girls schools that prepared its students for a life so theoretical it was almost a complete waste of time. The one subject into which Arya had really been able to sink her teeth was the Outdoor Education program taught by the very conservative but highly skilled Ms Brienne Tarth. 

Ms Tarth was a walking contradiction. On the one had, she dutifully spouted the Mordane line about the highest goal of a young lady being an unsullied reputation and a respectable marriage. On the other she herself remained single and there was no feat of physical daring that she had not conquered. Though she would never have admitted it, Arya knew Ms Tarth felt ambivalent about the values of the organisation for which she worked. Regardless, Ms Tarth had taught her everything she knew. Arya had been her star pupil. But where her classmates left their outdoor skills at the ornately wrought school gates when they graduated and went off to become interior designers and wedding planners and journalists for fashion magazines, Arya felt a deep-seated need to do more of what she’d excelled in.

Jon had loved it when Arya asked to go climbing with him and when he’d seen what she could do, he couldn’t help boasting about how amazing she was to all his friends. He and Robb had planned different outdoor adventures to take her on every weekend of her school holidays and been astounded at how naturally she took to every hair-raising opportunity. Jon had even been the one to put in a good word for her with Davos after he’d first raised the idea of her taking a gap year, given that he’d spent so long in the Vale taking solace in nature and making peace with his lot in life. Robb and Jon had both played essential roles in convincing her parents to let her do it and eventually they’d grudgingly acquiesced.

Arya had arrived in the early autumn, eager to please and ready to revel in every new experience. The Vale had stretched before her, a tranquil land of rich black soil, wide slow-moving rivers, and hundreds of small lakes that shone like mirrors in the sun, protected on all sides by its sheltering peaks. She’d been awed by the view of the Bite to the north, the Bay of Crabs to the south, the Mountains of the Moon and the riverlands to the west, and the narrow sea to the east. Her Instagram feed had quickly become a virtual tour of the Vale’s natural beauty. The Giant's Lance was her favourite landmark, the largest mountain in the Vale of Arryn. It lay in the northern range, its peak lost in the clouds. From its western shoulder flowed the waterfall known as Alyssa's Tears where the waters poured from such a height that they turn to mist long before they ever reached the ground. When the wind was right, Arya could lean on her hostel balcony and feel the faint touch of spray on her face.

The Vale was isolated from the rest of Westeros but that was part of what she loved about it - it was a nice break from the inevitable intrusions that came with the territory of being a Stark. 

In the warmer weather everything was green and lush and the tourists swanned about in singlets and shorts. Its harsh winters severely limited travel through the mountains. It didn’t mean they had no clients in the winter, it just meant they were fewer in number and far more serious about the outdoor feats they aimed to achieve. Arya had loved working as a guide for them all.

Her early experience at the Vale had been vastly enhanced by the arrival of Gendry Waters. He was about four years older than her and though he’d been grumpy and stand-offish at first, she had quickly won him over, drawing out of him his deeply held love for the work they were doing. They’d immediately become an amazing team and the hostel residents that joined them for climbing or caving or canyoning or abseiling or bushwalking wrote rave reviews about the pair of them on Trip Advisor bringing further floods of bookings that Davos and Marya could barely keep up with.

Their separate living quarters had been right next door to one another but Gendry and Arya mostly lived on their shared balcony that year, the doors to which they never locked. Whichever one was up first would bring the other a cup of tea in bed in the morning and they would sit together every evening, talking late into the night and planning the further adventures that they wanted to take together once Arya’s gap year was over.

Arya had also nursed secret plans of her own for Gendry. She’d never really had a chance to know boys other than her brothers before she met him, and with his scruffy black hair, his deep blue eyes, his muscular form and his tendency to behave as if her opinion was the only one in the world that mattered to him, he’d quickly become the boy she wanted to know better than any other. Even though they did everything together, when they’d made plans to go to the music festival towards the end of the summer it finally felt like the date she’d been working up the courage to ask him on almost the whole year. 

The crowd had been pretty wild by the time The Red Woman took to the stage and Gendry had grabbed her hand. She knew that in his mind it might have been purely practical, the only way to stop them from getting separated amongst all those people. It didn’t stop her from feeling the thrill of his touch and whizzing through all the romantic implications hand-holding seemed to bring with it.

The first few songs of their set had been magical. She and Gendry held hands, pressed up against one another in the crowd. There she was, thinking it was all beginning. At last they could begin to delicately tip their precious friendship toward the intimacy she so wanted to experience with Gendry and Gendry alone.

When first he’d dropped her hand, Arya had scrambled to make another grab for it. He was moving forward, toward the stage - surely she was meant to follow. 

She’d called out his name but her voice had been lost in the racket.

Then she looked up and saw the lead singer beckoning to him and Gendry obeying like a lamb. 

Melisandre R’hllor was not the sort of woman Arya held a lot of respect for. Sure, her band was successful and their music was fun to listen to, but everything about Melisandre was the opposite of everything Arya was ever interested in being. Arya dressed to be able to scramble over a boulder at short notice. Melisandre dressed exclusively to court the male gaze. The neckline of her scarlet gown was plunging, the split in the skirt thigh high.

In that moment Arya knew her daydreams of Gendry gazing at her with such naked desire would never come to fruition. He wouldn’t look at her and see someone he wanted like he wanted Melisandre. Though she’d yearned to believe otherwise, it turned out Gendry was no different from any other of the mouth-breathing Neanderthals she’d encountered. 

Arya had leaned backwards into the whooping crowd, pushing herself away from the stage, her tear-filled eyes on Gendry as the red woman sensually draped herself over the toned back and shoulders that she herself had longed to caress with more than sisterly affection. The moment Melisandre planted her blood red lips on Gendry and he hungrily kissed her back, Arya fled.

She hadn’t laid eyes on him between then and the moment she stumbled across him carrying his bags into the hostel lobby. 

The only thing that kept her fist from connecting with his mouth was the love that Davos bore him.

Arya couldn’t guarantee how long her restraint would last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eeek! So glad some of you are liking this! Love that you're baying for his blood!
> 
> Community Service Announcement: scrubclub has now completed the masterpiece that is re: weapons (and you)  
> Do not miss out on this work of wonder. You will NOT regret it.  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/19087804/chapters/45348238


	5. Chapter 5

Where Gendry ensured that he was exacting in his refusal to respond to the flirtatious attention of their clients, Arya observed no such scruples. Often he’d wander into the pub across from the hostel in the evening to find her arm-wrestling a muscular Dornishman or laughing with a tall Northerner over a game of pool. Tonight she was playing darts with the group of Southron travellers they’d taken canyoning that morning and she was cheerfully thrashing the lot of them. Like the men he’d seen leering over her in the hotel lobby, these pricks were similarly enamoured and she laughed along with them as if they’d all been friends for years. 

Gendry envied that ability Arya had to charm her way into everyone’s good graces but in that moment he found himself envying even the clients she’d willingly smile at as opposed to the cold hell she was dishing out for him.

He slumped into a seat at the bar and Anguy gave him a pint and the sort of sympathetic look that suggested all of Gendry’s emotions were written clearly across his face.

“I liked it before when you and her were inseparable. You were like a rom com back then,” the bartender said nodding in Arya’s direction. “Now I feel like I’m being forced to watch some interminably miserable teen drama.”

Gendry snorted into his beer. “I live to entertain.”

“No one who saw you on stage with the Red Woman could argue with that, mate,” Anguy replied with a wink.

Gendry dropped his head into his hands. “Can we  _ please _ not talk about that?”

“Not talk about what?” 

The sound of Arya’s voice cause Gendry to snap back to attention, his eyes pleading with Anguy.

“Chafing,” the bartender replied, drawing a wide circle with his tea towel that encompassed everything between his nipples and his knees. “Terrible business.”

Arya raised her eyebrows disinterestedly and slapped a few bills on the counter.

“Don’t tell me  _ you’re _ buying a round for once, Arya?” Anguy said disbelievingly as he pulled a beer. She looked over her shoulder and shrugged. “It’s not my money. It’s one of theirs.” 

Gendry followed her gaze. One of the Southrons shot her a little wave. 

“That one, I suppose,” she said, sounding bored.

“Heard from Jaqen?” Anguy asked her.

Gendry immediately decided he didn’t like the little smile that the sound of this unfamiliar name elicited.

“He’s back in Braavos now,” Arya replied, and Gendry didn’t miss the warmth in her tone. “Settling back into his teaching.”

“That guy was amazing,” Anguy said. “You should have met him, Gendry. I’ve never seen anyone who could climb like him. Took him almost no time to scale the Giant’s Lance.”

Gendry nodded. “Yeah, I think he tagged the hostel in the photos he posted from the top. Impressive.” 

He turned to Arya, figuring he might as well know what he was up against. “You’ve kept in touch with him then?”

Arya shrugged, her gaze trained on the amber liquid flooding into the glass in Anguy’s hand.

Anguy laughed. “You should have heard this guy begging Arya to go back to Braavos with him. He was quite taken with her. The flowers he sent must have filled up your whole lounge room, hey?”

Gendry gave the bartender a hard look. Not everyone took quite so much delight in rubbing salt into people’s wounds.

Anguy clearly interpreted Gendry’s scowl as a challenge to see just how painful he could make it. 

“Admit it. You thought about it, didn’t you?” he said to Arya who silently rolled her eyes. 

“ _ And _ he has money,” Anguy added, turning to Gendry. “Flew up here in his own helicopter. Only others I’ve ever seen do that were your mum and dad, Arya.”

Gendry looked confusedly from Anguy to Arya whose cheeks had turned distinctly pink.

“A bit after you left, mate,” Anguy explained helpfully. “Arya’s mum and dad flew in to pick her up. Seems she’d been holding out on us. Turns out her dad’s the guy that pretty much runs the entire North.”

Gendry had barely started his first beer so it couldn’t have been drunkenness that led to this sense of nothing adding up.

“Sorry, what?” he asked, brows knitted together.

Anguy pulled the last of Arya’s beers and sorted out her change. She pulled away from the bar so quickly she left a trail of foam behind her.

“Taxi!” yelled one of the southrons to a burst of laughter by the dartboard.

“Anguy, what the hell are you talking about?” Gendry demanded.

“Just as I thought.” Anguy nodded. “You have no idea who she is, do you?”

That night, flopped on his lounge, Nymeria baring her terrifying teeth at him from the darkened balcony, Gendry did something that oddly he’d never before thought to do and googled Arya Stark. 

He saw the paparazzi photos of her parents that he’d never met, never particularly heard about in any detail, he got a virtual tour of her family mansion, he read lots of speculative gossip page articles filled with Instagram snaps of Arya cuddling up to a handsome blonde stranger (who he instantly loathed), he saw her society siblings and their sports cars, and he read about the scandal surrounding her beloved half-brother, Jon, dubbed the black sheep of the family. 

Suddenly he understood the appeal of a location as remote as the Vale of Arryn.

The media were obsessed with Arya’s family. 

How had he not known any of this before?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for getting into this, peeps!


	6. Chapter 6

Arya had toyed with the idea for a day or two before she decided she might as well reap the fruit of her earlier labour and unblock and re-follow Gendry on Instagram. It had been one of the activities that had brought her a vicious sense of satisfaction in the years they’d been apart - carefully curating her feed in such a way that should she ever have decided to let him see it, and should he still have cared, he would only have been able to see how awesome a time she was having with him right out of the picture. And in lots of ways, her insta feed didn’t _always_ lie. 

Arya had been farewelled from the hostel just as if she really were jetting off for more excitement but, at first, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. She’d really called her parents to come and rescue her.

The first six months back at Winterfell were messy and went mostly undocumented on social media. Her mum and dad had been kind and quietly worried about her and each of her siblings had made an effort to look after her in their own way. Bran got her into wheelchair rugby which was at least a great outlet for her aggression. Rickon sweetly let her beat him in all his favourite video games. She had allowed Sansa to drag her to various salons and spas which she knew were far more fun for her sister than herself but she supposed in hindsight she had Sansa to thank for the “strong eyebrow game” for which she’d received many baffling compliments ever since. 

Jon and Robb were her real saviours. They had done what they’d always done without regard for any of her particular emotions - gone AWOL and dragged her with them. The three of them hiked and climbed their way through the far north beyond the wall and it slowly, day by day, reawakened her dormant spirit of adventure.

After her year with her brothers, Arya had left once more to pursue adventure with a single-minded focus. Her next point of call had been to find herself a position as a crew member on a ship travelling west. She’d hoped the sea air and the completely different scenery might blast all remaining thoughts of what she’d lost right out of her head.

It was half-way up the rigging at sunset on her third night at sea that she’d spotted Ned Dayne.

The handsome blonde Dornishman was easy to talk to and light-hearted and struck her as successfully being everything that Gendry was not. It didn’t take long for them to tumble into a fling and all those firsts she’d long planned to experience with Gendry, she learned about instead with him.

Ned was a gifted photographer and loved nothing more than taking amazing candid shots of his beautiful girlfriend in the exotic locations they visited, especially of her executing feats of daring, peppered with the occasional loved-up selfie of the pair of them intertwined in a hammock or sprawled on a white-sanded beach or rumple-haired and languid-limbed, ensconced in white linen.

Those two years had gone by in a flash and when it ended between them, it was Arya’s turn to play the heart-breaker.

Ned had been devastated. His insta feed was even now still lightly seasoned with TBTs and FBFs and any other excuse he could think of to post a scant tri-monthly pic of her in her bathing suit or dangling from a rockface somewhere with a mournful little trail of emojis. She appreciated that deep down Ned seemed to know that posting more than once every three months wandered into stalker territory.

After that she’d gone east to Essos, at last following the trail that she and Gendry had planned to take together.

She’d crossed the Narrow Sea and, on the trip over, gathered a bunch of new friends with whom to roam the city-states on the westernmost portion of Essos, hiking the rugged hills in the north. She and one of the guys from the group had kayaked and white-water rafted their way down the Rhoyne River until it took them out to the Summer Sea near the port of Volantis, admiring the ruined cities of the Rhoynar people that had been defeated by the expanding Valyrians a thousand years before along the way.

She’d met some more new friends as she trekked across the Orange Shores and the Hills of Andalos, briefly exploring the Braavos Peninsula together and riding on hired bikes across the Flatlands, visiting farm stays as they got further east.

Travelling in the Disputed Lands had gotten a little bit hairy sometimes, especially navigating the Stepstones with their infamous pirate dens. Lastly, she and two of the girls she’d trekked with island-hopped to Lys, basking in the sun along the way. 

It was while surrounded by the lush tropics of Lys, afloat in the blue-green sea, that Arya realised her heart still belonged to the Vale.

She’d abandoned her plans to trek through the Forest of Qohor and cross the Dothraki Sea, fondly farewelling her companions while worrying that if she didn’t feel the spray of Alyssa’s Tears on her face before the year was out, she’d no longer recognise herself in the mirror.

First, she’d flown back to Winterfell where Jon had placed himself under self-imposed house arrest.

Sometimes his emotions got the better of him, sometimes he couldn’t hold himself back from punching the idiot who had a comment to make about the alleged dalliances of his father, sometimes the flirtation of an attractive woman proved too much for him to resist and the cameras seemed to always be on hand to capture every moment. 

Jon and Arya spent a week hiking through the snow and when they returned home, Jon was restored to himself enough to at least show his face outside again.

Arya called to check in with Davos, reminded Jon that he was always welcome at the Vale and packed to set off for her return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing like a vengeful insta feed... Tune in next chapter to watch Gendry getting a glimpse of it!
> 
> I love your kind comments, you darlings!


	7. Chapter 7

Gendry sat slumped in the poky kitchen of his flat within the hostel and wondered when a wiser man than him would give it up for lost. In the last week Arya had maybe said nine words to him that weren’t professionally required and looked his way as minimally as she could. 

There were photos of the two of them that some of the punters had loaded up to Instagram, tagging the hostel, in which they stood side by side looking almost friendly. Arya excelled at maintaining a comfortable banter while they took groups out for their various activities but that ended the moment they were left alone. It didn’t stop him from gazing yearningly at what those photos seemed to capture, wishing he could enter once more into the easy camaraderie they used to share.

He received a notification and almost fell off his chair. 

Arya had started following him on Instagram again. 

Was this a sign of her forgiveness? 

It would be tricky to cling to that hope given that her every glance at him was through narrowed, angry eyes and her every grudging word directed his way was either in clipped instruction or withering insult. But having already indulged in an unhealthy amount of voyeurism via Google in the days prior, and entirely lacking all sense of self-preservation, he felt no qualms about similarly indulging his curiosity now that it seemed he’d been invited to. 

Perhaps he should have anticipated the pain she was luring him into. 

Deciding to experience it all chronologically, he tested the mettle of the hostel wifi, scrolling all the way back to the last selfie she’d posted of the pair of them, standing side-by-side amongst the boisterous crowd in the late summer sun at the Mountain Music Festival five years before.

Just the sight of the pair of them, easy and happy together, made Gendry want to weep.

If Arya had wanted to weep like Davos told him she had, there was not a hint of it in her insta feed other than the one of her, teary-eyed, embracing Marya at her farewell.

In the next gold-tinged shot, perhaps taken by one of her parents, she was wearing one of those mic’d headsets they give you in helicopters and gazing out towards where the sun was setting behind the Giant’s Peak, lighting up a rainbow aura around Alyssa’s Tears.

What followed - after one shot of her inexplicably sweaty in a wheelchair, one of her triumphantly holding aloft a game controller and one of her wrapped in a bathrobe, her hair in a turban - was a haze of blinding white and countless shots of two burly, bearded young men, their dark brown curls just visible under their frost-coated beanies. The comments beneath, if he hadn’t been able to recognise them from his Google search, marked them out as Jon Snow and Robb Stark, Arya’s two oldest brothers. That any of them had survived this period seemed miraculous to Gendry, dotted as it was with evidence of death-defying feats of outdoor prowess on all of their parts, all in a winter so severe it looked like how he imagined death itself.

The white of the Northern winter was suddenly exchanged for a deep ocean blue as he scrolled up together with the arrival of the blonde wanker he’d learned to hate from all those gossip articles. After a while he could no longer bring himself to read the comments in true stalker style, so nauseated was he by what he read and saw unmistakable evidence of. Ned Dayne’s name was next to all the little camera emojis beneath a swathe of photographs that perfectly captured Arya’s beauty and mischief and softness and vulnerability - glimpses into her character that, until that night, Gendry had wanted to believe were reserved only for him. 

It hurt him almost physically to see the warmth of Arya’s smile for the man behind the camera, to get a glimpse of how this prick had wined and dined her as she deserved and in a way that Gendry would never have been able to afford. 

What almost killed him was all the evidence that suggested Ned had been the one to initiate Arya into what Davos might have wistfully referred to as ‘the tender ways of a man with a woman’. Judging by her many sleepy smiles for the camera from the other side of a well-used bed, at least Ned seemed to have taken much more care at initiating Arya than Melisandre had taken with him.

He braced himself to tap on the dickhead’s handle and was at least gratified to see that though the poor guy still obviously yearned for the glory days with Arya by his side, she actually hadn’t been anywhere near Ned Dayne for roughly two years now. 

Where it had seemed Arya’s feed in those days was full of Ned’s shots of her, Gendry quickly learned that the ones she chose to post were merely the tip of the iceberg. This poor kid had gotten to live and breathe Arya Stark for a good long portion of his young adult life and he had obviously made the most of it, afterward launching what seemed to be a lucrative career as a travel and fashion photographer on the back of his images of her. Now Ned had to work out how to do it all without her and Gendry wasn’t sure he was acing it. 

But who was he to judge? Here he was sitting in his pants in his kitchen at 3am scrolling through his lost love’s ex-boyfriend’s insta feed while she slept peacefully next door, maybe still hating him even in her dreams.

He was greatly relieved when the Dayne-Period of Arya’s feed finally petered out. 

After he disappeared, she still seemed surrounded by swathes of toothy youngsters, glowing with rude health in front of many and various glamorous back-drops.

It didn’t take Gendry long to realise that together with these toothy youngsters, Arya had trod the path that they had planned to take together, all while he was stuck under the body of a broken down car in Mott’s garage in King’s Landing as if paying for his crimes.

How he would have loved to be behind her in that kayak as she white-water rafted down the Rhoyne or carried her pack for her as she roamed through the Hills of Andalos. 

Arya never would have admitted to being scared but he would have liked to have been beside her in the Disputed Lands nonetheless. He could read her better than most. 

At least, once upon a time he’d thought he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ouch...  
> thanks, lovely readers and commenters!!! it is SO appreciated!!!


	8. Chapter 8

Arya was still angry with him but now Gendry was equal parts angry with her. How could he have known her and  _ loved _ her and yet not really known anything about her at all?

It was possible that under the righteous indignation seethed something much greener in complexion as well as a deep-seated conviction that even if he could get her to love him again, he could never, ever be good enough for her. But whether it was their anger at one another or what, that afternoon they got careless.

The other less useful staff had left to escort the punters back to the hostel for the night and Gendry and Arya were hurriedly gathering equipment after an afternoon abseiling session for beginners. Autumn was coming and the days were getting shorter so they’d been in somewhat of a rush to collect all the discarded helmets and harnesses before it got too dark to see properly. 

Gendry was at the bottom of the beginner’s grade cliff, throwing all the discarded items into a bag while Arya did the same on top. Once she’d packed she called to him so that she could abseil down to join him while he belayed.

She didn’t stop to check her ropes and he didn’t think to remind her.

Before Gendry knew what was happening, Arya was scrambling and falling and no amount of him frantically pulling on ropes was doing anything to slow her down.

“Gendry!” she cried, a panic in her voice he’d never heard before.

She scrabbled for a hold but she didn’t have a lot of purchase and he could see her hand slipping.

Gendry positioned himself beneath her, bracing himself to at least break her fall.

“I’ve got you, Arya!” he called up to her. “If you have to let go, you’re going to be ok! I promise!”

She yelped and there was a sudden shower of little rocks she kicked loose with her flailing foot and in an instant he was somehow grasping her in his arms, breathing heavily.

He crouched to the ground, checking her over, his eyes raking desperately over her face and body.

“Are you ok?” he asked, stunned by the impossible stillness after such frenzy.

She nodded, simultaneously looking herself over for signs of any injury.

Gendry couldn’t help himself. He pulled her in, close to his chest, pressing a relieved kiss to her forehead.

“You’re ok,” he repeated, more to himself than to her.

“Thanks,” she whispered against his chest.

“Arya,” he whispered back. “I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you. Especially when-” He stopped himself before all his unwelcome feelings came flooding out.

She pulled back to look at him, her voice still barely there. “Especially when what?”

Gendry shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just so glad you’re alright.”

She looked into his eyes for a long moment before her own eyes suddenly grew wide.

“Gendry! You’re bleeding!”

He loosened his hold on her enough to reach up and touch his forehead. Sure enough his fingers came away wet with blood.

“Must have been hit by a loose rock,” he murmured. “S’alright. Doesn’t hurt much.”

She leaned out of Gendry’s arms and grabbed for the bag she’d dropped as she fell. With a practised speed, she pulled a gauze pad out of the well-used first aid kit and, leaning back into him, pressed it to the cut at his hairline.

He didn’t know how long they sat there but it was the first time she’d shown him anything like tenderness since the day he’d arrived. It made him want to laugh that he’d had to literally shed blood to draw even a hint of affection out of her.

As if she could read his thoughts, she hastily taped the gauze to his brow and pushed herself out of his arms, clambering unsteadily to her feet.

“We’d better be getting back,” she said, stepping out of her harness and yanking down the ropes that had been no help to her only moments earlier. 

He could see her hands shaking as she coiled them up and shoved them into the bag she’d dropped as she fell.

“Here,” said Gendry reaching for it. “Let me.”

The softness in her eyes that he had missed for so long was replaced by that familiar suspicious narrowing. 

“I’m perfectly capable of carrying it, you know. I’ve been doing this on my own for months before you reappeared.”

“Of course I know that,” Gendry shot back exasperatedly. “But, Arya, you nearly had a horrible accident. Look at you, you’re shaking. Can you just let me help you for once?”

Arya held out her hands as if to check the truth of his words. Seeing how badly she was trembling seemed to allow her to let herself feel the gripping fear and the subsequent relief and all of the emotions in between. She let the bag drop from her shoulder and suddenly turned on her heel, stalking away from Gendry towards the base of the cliff.

He stood and watched her back, uncertain of what he should do.

She let out a shuddering gasp and it occurred to him that Arya was crying.

“Can I-” he began tentatively, taking a step towards. “Arya?” 

He reached out for her, gently touching her shoulder.

She shied away from him, apparently desperate to hide her tears.

“Arya,” he said pleadingly. “Please come here.”

She turned slowly, unable to meet his eye but she let him tenderly hold her close.

Being encircled by his arms seemed to open the flood gates and he felt her shoulders shaking as he cradled her against him.

Gendry whispered comforting words into her temple and pressed his lips there as often as he dared. He couldn’t believe it took her falling off a cliff for him to be able to get a hug.

At last he looked up and realised the light was almost gone. 

“Arya, we need to go. What can I do?”

She stepped back from him, running her fingertips under her red eyes. 

“I’m ok, Gendry. Thanks.” She leant down to pick up the bag. “And I’m ok to carry this now.”

He gave her a querying look.

“Seriously,” she said, and almost smiled at him for the first time since she’d thought of Nymeria ripping him to shreds on their shared balcony. 

The two of them walked side by side up the narrow track, each hoisting their big bags on their outside shoulder, their inside arms dangling loosely between them in a way that kept confronting Gendry with opportunity.

Instead of trying to take her hand, which he knew would be a wasted effort, he knuckled down to asking the questions he wanted answered.

“So I realised you’d never really told me much about your family,” he said, carefully keeping his tone light. “I was really surprised by what Anguy said.”

“Was it the helicopter that surprised you?” she asked. “Or the fact that I needed my Mummy and Daddy to come and get me after you left?”

He couldn’t mistake the bitterness in her tone. Davos was right. She certainly wasn’t indifferent to him, not that it made him feel any better.

“Arya, I know you never listened to any of those messages I left you-”

“Actually,” she said quietly, “I did. I listened to every single one. Repeatedly.”

“You did?” he asked, incredulous. “Then you heard all my grovelling. You heard me begging for your forgiveness. You heard me pleading with you to let me come travelling with you.”

“Yep,” she said simply. “I heard it all.”

Gendry could barely comprehend it. “Did you not believe me?” he asked. “Did you think I was still with Melisandre and lying to you?”

“Nope,” she replied. “I knew from the first moment she beckoned to you that she’d drop you on your arse.”

“So why didn’t you ever take my calls?” he pleaded. “Arya, I promise you, leaving you was the single biggest mistake of my life. I’ve regretted it every day. I’ve learned from it, I swear.”

“I did  _ want _ to talk to you, Gendry,” she admitted. “Honestly, I did, but-” 

She paused as if weighing up whether or not she’d actually say what was on her mind. 

Gendry watched her intently, waiting.

“I learned from it too.” Arya shrugged. “I learned that I could never trust you ever again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Double ouch!   
> BUT a turning of sorts is upon us! Tune in next chapter for a surprise element that might turn them even further towards one another!
> 
> One of the downsides of such quick updates is that sometimes a super unbelievably dorky sentence slips past you and you don't even notice until one of your readers points it out. As such, the last chapter has now been edited to read "What almost killed him was all the evidence that suggested Ned had been the one to initiate Arya into what Davos might have wistfully referred to as ‘the tender ways of a man with a woman’."   
> I whole-heartedly apologise for implying that Gendry thinks like a hundred year old man. Not that Davos is 100 but you know what I mean.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, regarding that surprise: you probably won't be surprised, but the characters will!

Gendry felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

It was dark by the time they made it back to the hostel but their eyes were drawn to the sky by the lights and thunderous sound of a landing helicopter. They ducked inside to store the abseiling gear while Gendry absently wondered if this time it’d be Arya’s parents or this dick, Jaqen, arriving to whisk Arya away.

He’d been silently nursing his broken pride after the blow Arya dealt him and hoping for a third option until it turned out it was neither the Starks nor Jaqen but someone inexplicably wanting to see him.

The man waiting in the lobby was enormously fat, the folds of his expansive stomach only somewhat disguised by his expensive looking suit.

“Uncle Robert?” called Arya incredulously when she spotted him across the lobby. “What on earth are you doing here?” 

He waved and waddled towards them, his eyes on Gendry.

“ _ This _ is your uncle?” Gendry whispered.

“Not my real uncle,” she whispered back. “He’s one of those friends of your parents that sort of gets added into the family.”

Gendry nodded but he had no idea what she meant. Families were still a total mystery to him.

“He’s not here to abseil I’d wager,” he muttered.

“Arya!” the large man crowed, taking her hand and kissing it. “Delightful to see you. Your dad sends his love.”

He looked meaningfully back towards Gendry.

“Oh,” said Arya, suddenly remembering the manners that had been diligently impressed upon her as a child. “Uncle Robert, this is my friend, Gendry Waters.”

He stuck out a pudgy hand for Gendry to shake. 

Gendry almost missed it, so surprised was he to hear Arya describe him as her friend.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Gendry asked.

“Err, yes,” he said, gesturing to the armchair opposite him. “I do. Would you mind giving us a moment, Arya?”

“Of course,” she said, looking from one to the other, obviously mystified. “Can I- err- get you a tea or coffee while you talk?”

“Ale,” Robert said shortly, his eyes on Gendry.

Gendry felt uncomfortable under Baratheon’s scrutiny and looked helplessly at Arya. 

“I’d love a coffee. Thanks, Arya.”

She communicated that she understood his unease but that she was powerless to help him. Even the unexpected sympathy in her gaze felt like something of a balm.

As she walked away, Baratheon handed Gendry his shiny, latest model phone. “Have a look at that,” he said.

On the screen was a grainy photo of a young man, shirtless, lying on a beach… Was it him? But Gendry hadn’t ever had the opportunity to do much in the way of lying about on beaches. He looked back at the big man, baffled.

“Me, at your age,” Robert offered by way of explanation.

Gendry looked closer. “But this looks just like me,” he said quietly. 

He looked up to find Baratheon giving him a meaningful look. “Ever wondered who your father was?”

“Every day,” Gendry answered truthfully, “but I don’t underst…” and then all of a sudden he did understand. “You’re my father, aren’t you,” he said.

Baratheon nodded slowly. “Seems so. Ned Stark was sure of it when he happened to see a photo of you up here where Arya was working.”

Gendry stared at the photo again. “We look very alike.”

Robert laughed. “Not now,” he chuckled. “But you’re a dead ringer for me as a young man. Looking at you is like looking in a mirror thirty years ago.”

Gendry looked back up at him, managing to force his grimace into a smile. “Well, I guess it’s nice to finally meet you.”

Robert grinned. “Nice to meet you too, son.”

Arya appeared at that moment holding out Gendry’s favourite mug and handing Robert a tall glass of beer.

“Arya,” said Robert jovially, taking the glass she offered him, “Meet my son, Gendry Baratheon.”

Gendry pushed himself to his feet taking in Arya’s wide eyes as she held out his mug.

The hostel’s ridiculous radio station suddenly seemed impossibly loud in his ears. He’d never understood the appeal of Duran Duran’s  _ Girls On Film _ .

“Erm,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “It’s a bit much to take in just now, sir. Do you think maybe I could take a bit of a walk for a minute? Drink my coffee outside somewhere?”

Robert nodded, chastised. “Sorry, my boy,” he said. “A bit much to spring on you without any warning.”

Arya handed him the mug, her gaze sympathetic. “Want me to come with you?” she asked gently.

Gendry shook his head, asking her a favour with his eyes. “You stay here. Catch up with your uncle.”

She nodded, shooting him a little smile, then sat down to entertain Robert in his absence.

Gendry stalked outside, coffee in hand, and leant against the balcony railing, wishing he could see the Vale plunging down beneath him. He felt like he needed something to give him some perspective, something to anchor himself to, but all he had stretching out beneath him was endless black.

It was too much to take in, too much to make sense of. He didn’t even know how to begin.

Gendry had no idea how much time went by before Arya eventually came out to find him.

She stood silently beside him and they stared out into the blackness together.

“Bit of a shock, hey?” she asked quietly.

“What’s he like?” Gendry asked. “How does your dad know him?”

Arya looked uncomfortable. “You know how Anguy said my dad practically runs the North?”

“Yeah.”

“He’s a big business guy. He’s made a lot of good investments, sits on a lot of boards. Robert is like his southern equivalent but they’re friends too. Always have been.”

“I sort of freaked out when he called me Gendry Baratheon.”

“I don’t blame you.”

“What do you think he wants from me?” Gendry asked. “Why is he here?”

“Curiosity?” Arya suggested. “A sense of responsibility to his own flesh and blood? A desire to get to know you?”

“Does he have other kids?”

Arya nodded. “But it’s complicated.”

“It’d have to be if he was hooking up with my mother along the way. He left her without a penny.”

“Do you think he even knew she was pregnant?”

Gendry considered that. His mum has been a proud woman. She would probably never have told him.

“He wants you and I to go and visit him in Storm’s End. Says he’ll invite my whole family too.”

“I don’t know your family,” said Gendry simply. “And if they know anything about me, they probably don’t particularly want to meet me.”

Arya shook her head. “I never told mum and dad anything about you. I just told them I wanted to go home.”

Gendry felt a wave of relief wash over him but he knew none of it changed the fact that Arya still felt she couldn’t trust him.

“I wish none of it had happened, Arya,” he said earnestly. “I wish that every day.”

She smiled at him sadly. “So do I.”


	10. Chapter 10

Robert Baratheon left with Gendry’s contact details and a promise that he’d soon be in touch. 

He didn’t hear from Robert again until the media somehow connected them just as videos of him and Melisandre began to surface online, getting picked up by every news outlet.

“Robert Baratheon’s Bastard: Like Father, Like Son” they screamed, flooding social media.

Melisandre, who’d left The Red Woman and was valiantly trying to launch her flagging solo career, did interview after interview about her torrid week with Gendry suggesting in no uncertain terms that should he want to get in touch with her, she certainly wouldn’t kick him out of bed. Gendry realised that it was because she probably expected him to have heaps of money now. Robert was richer even than the Starks.

Gendry found Arya scowling at her phone one morning in the staff common room. He snuck a look over her shoulder. It was an opinion piece on the Westerosi business leaders and their irrepressibly badly behaved bastards, complete with unflattering photos of all four men with their companions - Robert and some scantily clad dancer, Gendry and Melisandre at the festival, her father together with her impeccably dressed mother, and her beloved brother, Jon caught in a tryst with his latest girlfriend, Ygritte.

“I hate that your family has been dragged into this, Arya,” said Gendry angrily, making her jump.

“And I hate that you’re finding out what it feels like to be one of us all of a sudden.”

“It’s so awful that they feel like they own anyone who steps out of line.”

Arya shrugged.

“Is there anything I can do?”

She shoved her last bit of toast into her mouth and her phone into her back pocket. “Make sure we’re not late to meet this caving group?” she suggested. “Got your gear?”

Gendry nodded. “I’m looking forward to hiding my face in the depths of the earth for a few hours.”

Arya nodded grimly. “You and me both.”

Arya and Gendry always took it in turns to provide the commentary as they led their group through the caves, pointing out stalactites and stalagmites and other amazing rock formations as they travelled deeper and deeper underground. Gendry’s favourite moment of every week’s tour was when they sat at the bottom of whichever cave it was and got everyone to turn their torches out so city dwellers could experience what real darkness felt and sounded like.

He knew that Arya was sitting just to his left when they turned off the lights. It gave him hope that hers was the hand that found his knee and that eagerly intertwined fingers with his when he covered it with his own. He gently took the hand in his own and brought it to his lips, making sure his kiss was so soft, it wouldn’t make a sound in the silent darkness.

When at last he heard her voice right beside him announcing that the group could light up their torches once more, he confirmed that no one else’s hand could possibly have gotten close enough. He also confirmed a pink flush on her cheeks and noted the sweet smile she flashed him.

Hours later when they emerged from the cave at last to renewed cell phone coverage, both his and Arya’s phones blew up with notifications. They gave one another a worried glance.

“Don’t look yet,” Gendry whispered. “Let it wait till we get back to the hostel.”

Arya nodded. “Good plan.”

They sent two other staff members ahead to lead the group home and dawdled behind with the flimsy cover of gathering their minimal equipment. It all fit inside one small backpack which Gendry slung over his shoulder. He offered his other hand to Arya who took it shyly.

“Did I catch you fondling my knee in the dark earlier?” he asked playfully.

“No,” she replied, batting her eyelids. “Maybe it was that Loras guy?”

Gendry chortled. “Maybe it was. I guess I’ll never know.”

“You’d think that kiss on the knuckles might have elicited more of a reaction from him,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

“Phew,” he laughed. “So it was you.”

Arya grinned.

He wanted to ask if this meant she’d decided to trust him again but he was afraid of hearing her deny it. Maybe it was just enough for her that they were stuck in similar family nightmares. Either way, he’d cheerfully accept her affection and forbid himself from asking questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey dudes, thanks to those who've gotten into this. I'm super sorry to do this to you but I sort of feel like I'm not really hitting the mark writing for this fandom so I'm leaving this one here. I've had some fun but I think a time comes when you realise you're not really up to the task you've set yourself and that it might be better to conserve your energy for other things!

**Author's Note:**

> Did we need a Gendry and Arya are Backpacker Hostel staff AU?   
> Probably not.   
> Might we enjoy one?   
> I hope so!
> 
> Simultaneously posting this with "Head of the River" (my School Principal/Head Rowing Coach AU) because for some reason I get more done when I'm writing two fics at once. Go figure...


End file.
